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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#581

Post by tptacek »

jlawson wrote: post #534
tptacek wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can say whatever he wants, of course, but should not be surprised when he takes comparatively more flak for venturing forth on issues involving race. New York Magazine is a business, and can make their own decisions about whether that flak is worth absorbing. Certainly, his ideas on these topics don't seem to be worth much on their own merits.

It's always amazing how you (and all others parroting this line) can freely switch back and forth between "he who has the gold makes the rules and that's okay" and "corporations need to support this cause I support", depending on exactly who is getting hurt in each situation. Come on - you must realize that you don't actually believe your argument as a principle, you're just using it as an excuse because you want Sul…

No, I believe the argument as a principle. The alternative, that certain people somehow have a right to employment at private companies, doesn't make any sense.

Labor has market power as well, if it chooses to employ it. Somehow, I don't think a guild of columnists is going to amass to protect Sullivan, though.

As an aside: do you think it has ever once been persuasive to write something like "you must realize you don't mean what you say, but rather this other thing I'm convinced you think"?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#582

Post by baddox »

roenxi wrote: post #421
baddox wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s okay to take positions on factual matters even if a political party also happens to take that same position. If one party believes the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the other party disagrees, it’s not exactly “partisan” (at least not in the pejorative sense) to take a side on that matter.

If that is the standard, political parties will just start claiming that all their opinions are factual (as happens in practice, coincidentally). If we had an algorithm to sort fact from fiction then that would be fine, but we don't. Our method for sorting fact and fiction is to ask an expert. Experts are not reliable in political situations because there are experts who are willing to believe anything for money. Par…

I didn’t mention opinions which are claimed to be factual matters. I mentioned factual matters. The fact that people can lie isn’t exactly new.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#583

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

account47t83 wrote: post #573
s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do disagree, and it is for their safety, many of them are getting hurt. I don't care if they want it or not, if they don't, they don't know what's good for them.

The problem here is that the protestors are against what they perceive as excessive use of force. Sending in the national guard would escalate the situation further. One of the reasons these protests persist is that they elicit from the police much of the behavior they detest. The protests are self-fueling.

Letting them do whatever they want is not a valid choice, no matter how they feel.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#584

Post by Bud »

chlodwig wrote: post #440
Bud wrote: post #404

In addition to the lies I listed in my other comment, Taibbi also lies about what he calls the "now-discredited Steele dossier" in this piece. Here are the facts: not a single significant conclusion in the Steele dossier has ever been discredited or proven false to date. Not one. Anyone who read Taibbi during the W Administration, and who reads him again now, can readily discern that someone got to him. It's not the…

It was discredited, Steele's own source reported to the FBI that the stuff in the report was full of hearsay, rumor, misstatements, and exaggeration: 'the Primary Sub-source told the FBI that he/she had not seen Steele's reports until they became public that month, and that he/she made statements indicating that Steele misstated or exaggerated the Primary Sub-source's statements in multiple sections of the reporting.…

Absolutely none of those items are primary conclusions from Steele. Nobody cares about "how many degrees of separation existed" between sources. That's just a bunch of Republican misdirection. This is really the best you can do? What about the actual relevant points in his report? Is there a reason you didn't even mention any of them?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#585

Post by pm90 »

thu2111 wrote: post #577
pm90 wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fine to be wrong. I missed that paragraph in his essay. But there is a reason why that paragraph was missed, and Ive tried to portray the reason why that might be in my other comments. I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m trying to address the reasons why his op ed was deemed to be so revolting. A lot of the comments seem to confess a kind of willful blindness to the awfulness involved in that essay and I’m t…

I've read all your comments and like others, find your thought process confusing. You started by saying, "I would advise care when reading it" . Now you're saying you somehow "missed that paragraph in his essay" . So you've been attacking Cotton without having actually read what he wrote despite telling others to read it carefully, but that's OK because "it's fine to be wrong" . In fact you seem to be suggesting you…

If only you spent the amount of effort analyzing his essay rather than my comments.

> Words in isolation mean absolutely nothing? Context matters sure, but not to the extent that actual words mean nothing at all. Your position here is that what people say they believe doesn't actually matter in the slightest, and should be ignored in favour of vaguely defined "context". Who defines this context? I guess you do. In fact in this world view Cotton can say something as clearly as possible and it should still be ignored, because what he "really" means is - obviously - the exact opposite.

I’ve provided enough reasoning about why context is important in my other comments and I’ve sure you’ve read that since you’ve been reading all of them. Context is important to understand what the outcome of a policy results in. It is not an academic debate as people on this forum seem to think. You can be a racist without saying explicitly racist stuff; adding a disclaimer that one is not racist doesn’t really change anything.

> So now I think we're all hopelessly confused. Which is it? Is Cotton saying "exactly what he meant to say" or is he saying the opposite of what he meant?

That was in response to 2 different things. He said exactly what he meant wrt giving no quarter (isolated tweet, different from essay) while paying lip service to the distinction between peaceful protestors and rioters in the essay. Which is why, again, context matters.

> Finally, you state "I’m trying to address the reasons why his op ed was deemed to be so revolting". I'm afraid you aren't succeeding. I can't figure out if it was revolting because of the words he wrote, or the words he didn't write, or if those words are meaningless and it's all about "context", in which case it appears no op-ed written by him could have ever passed muster regardless of what it said. This looks a lot like a slippery argument that Sen Cotton simply shouldn't be allowed to speak at all.

It’s possible, yes. I am human and I make mistakes. Not perfect. But the amount of length that people like you go to try and discredit others rather than take a moment to understand another perspective is staggering, while simultaneously claiming to “fail to see why his essay was controversial”. It points to not a failure to understand but an unwillingness to.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#586

Post by xg15 »

giardini wrote: post #473
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that when black people kill more than ten times more black people than cops kill black people, somebody is not wrong to ask why the focus should only be on the cops.

AnthonyMouse says >" when black people kill more than ten times more black people than cops kill black people " It is worse than that: black people murder more than ten times more black people than all white people murder black people: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Again, how is that relevant? Are you saying that black people somehow deserve no protection by police because "they should get their house in order" first? (Whatever that should mean)

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#587

Post by xnyan »

jlawson wrote: post #533
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really isn't more to the "extreme left" than equality and dignity. The problem is that even suggesting that equality and dignity are valid as bedrock communal values in business, politics, law, and economics is considered an aggressively extremist ultra-left position in the US - and not a sane and mature common sense centre-left view, as it is in parts of Europe. There's a reason for this, and it's to do with t…

What is North Korea? Cuba? Soviet Union? Doesn't sound like equality and dignity to me. What you're not getting is that equality and dignity aren't even compatible if you try to push equality to extremes. Dignity means giving people freedom to make their own choices and live as they wish; the opposite of dignity is enslaving them. But as soon as people can make different choices they'll start achieving different outc…

Let’s see, a state that no longer exists and two of the worst examples of left based ideology nation states.

You sound like a rational person. If I give you three examples of current capitalist ideology authoritarian states (one more example than you gave), reason would dictate that you will of course instantly become a leftest because you are a rational person and by your own self-described logic, the correct ideology is determined by which ideological system has a higher count of authoritarian states.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#588

Post by remarkEon »

pm90 wrote: post #566
parsimo2010 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve ever read a journalist’s take on a subject that you’re an expert in, you’ll realize that they do not become experts after researching a story, nor are they any better at identifying BS than other people. Some journalists that specialize in a particular field become experts, but it takes time to learn. Journalists don’t have some secret way to learn faster than other people. Journalists do get training in in…

I think you may have a bias against journalists =p. It’s true that they may not be experts in everything that they report on, even if it’s their niche. Eg I think Kara Swisher does a reasonably good job of representing technology related things but there’s things she says that are not really true. However the one thing journalists do cover well and have good expertise in is current event and politics. They are closes…

>However the one thing journalists do cover well and have good expertise in is current event and politics.

They are only "good" at this because so many of them worked on campaigns and there's a revolving door between that campaign work and the politics desk at media organizations. That isn't a badge of honor, or a signal that they know what they're talking about. It's a mark of partisanship, and they try their best to cloak it when they do their reporting ... but then they go back to the campaign when their guy is running.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#589

Post by downerending »

spoopyskelly wrote: post #363
mcphage wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you hate the cancel culture on the left, your mind is going to be blown when you find out what the right has been doing.

The right defending freedom of speech and the left pushing fascist ideals is pretty mind blowing.

Yes, it's been highly disorienting and depressing for me. I suppose I always imagined that the right would come around to some of the left's better ideas, but I never expected that the left would pick up some the right's worst ideas.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#590

Post by thu2111 »

pm90 wrote: post #585
thu2111 wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read all your comments and like others, find your thought process confusing. You started by saying, "I would advise care when reading it" . Now you're saying you somehow "missed that paragraph in his essay" . So you've been attacking Cotton without having actually read what he wrote despite telling others to read it carefully, but that's OK because "it's fine to be wrong" . In fact you seem to be suggesting you…

If only you spent the amount of effort analyzing his essay rather than my comments. > Words in isolation mean absolutely nothing? Context matters sure, but not to the extent that actual words mean nothing at all. Your position here is that what people say they believe doesn't actually matter in the slightest, and should be ignored in favour of vaguely defined "context". Who defines this context? I guess you do. In fa…

Now you're mis-representing what I wrote too!

I have never claimed I “fail to see why his essay was controversial”. Nobody has, that phrase appears nowhere in this thread except your post, yet you actually put it in quotes as if it's a direct repetition of a claim I made. It's obvious why his essay was controversial: it's about a controversial topic that many people feel strongly about.

"the amount of length that people like you go to try and discredit others rather than take a moment to understand another perspective is staggering"

We're trying. If you perceive simply repeating your own words back at you as an attempt to discredit you, that should suggest why none of us can understand your position. The point of this exercise is thus to try and get you to explain yourself more clearly and ideally, to stop constantly misrepresenting what other people are saying.

So I will repeat myself. Your core problem is that you don't believe in arguing with what people's written positions actually are. Instead you keep stuffing words in their mouth and then when called on it, you blow it off by claiming it's all about context. No, sorry, that's not acceptable. This kind of behaviour drives reasonable people nuts. And especially this belief:

"You can be a racist without saying explicitly racist stuff; adding a disclaimer that one is not racist doesn’t really change anything".

Your position is that once you decided someone is a racist they're a racist. It doesn't matter if they never said any "racist stuff". In fact it doesn't matter how carefully they choose their words: you won't even read them whilst claiming you did, and even whilst telling other people to read more carefully. Because "it's fine to be wrong".

This is "she's a witch" level of debate.

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